


That May Not Be Denied

by hawkwing_lb



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 14:14:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5629396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawkwing_lb/pseuds/hawkwing_lb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Aveline looks the other way for Isabela, and tells herself it's the lesser of two evils. </em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	That May Not Be Denied

**Author's Note:**

> This is [Zoe's](https://twitter.com/aerie_faerie) requested giftmas present.
> 
> The title's from John Masefield's "Sea Fever:" 
> 
> _I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide_  
>  _Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied._

 

Isabela does favours for Aveline, and tells herself it's for Hawke, or for the sheer devilment of being able to needle upright Lady Man-Hands. She's a thief and a smuggler and a pirate, and any way you look at it she shouldn't pass the time of _day_ with an officer of the city guard -- much less drop an occasional word in her ear about some of the even _less_ savoury Kirkwall characters whose path Isabela at times winds up crossing.

Aveline is upright and prudish and disapproving. They should hate each other's guts. They _do_ hate each other's guts: it's only Hawke that brings them together.

It's only ever Hawke.

That's what Isabela tells herself.

 

* * *

 

> _Aveline: How are you so successful with men? You're not that pretty._
> 
> _Isabela: Cast a wide enough net, and you're bound to catch something._
> 
> _Aveline: (Laughs) At least you're willing to admit it._
> 
> _Isabela: Trust me. I've heard, "Get away from me, you pirate hag!" more times than I care to count._
> 
> _Aveline: Doesn't that bother you?_
> 
> _Isabela: Why should it? They don't know me. I know me._

 

* * *

 

 

Aveline looks the other way for Isabela, and tells herself it's the lesser of two evils. Isabela never kills anyone who didn't have it coming, never swindles anyone who didn't have money to lose, and mostly restricts her thieving to petty pilferage or to _other_ thieves. And the whores she... encourages... are mostly discreet. The bar brawls are the worst of her obvious sins. And Hawke _likes_ her, which shouldn't sway Aveline's opinion and yet does. Aveline doesn't have many friends, apart from Hawke and Varric. She knows she's hard to like.

Aveline looks the other way, because Isabela can be useful. The woman is a pirate and a thief and the most sexually incontinent person Aveline has ever met -- a whore and a rogue and for years she adds: _utterly untrustworthy_. She tells herself she hates Isabela's sharp tongue and cutting wit: it's only Hawke that brings them together.

It's only ever Hawke, that's what she wants to believe.

But Aveline isn't good at lying, not even to herself.

 

* * *

 

>  
> 
> _Aveline: You're right._
> 
> _Isabela: About?_
> 
> _Aveline: About knowing who you are._
> 
> _Aveline: I'm the captain of the guard. I'm loyal, strong, and I don't look too bad naked._
> 
> _Isabela: Exactly. And if I called you a mannish, awkward, ball-crushing do-gooder, you'd say...?_
> 
> _Aveline: Shut up, whore._
> 
> _Isabela: That's my girl._

 

* * *

 

They don't _like_ each other. Not exactly.

Isabela never speaks of the night Aveline tells her how Wesley died, drunk enough to remember but not drunk enough to forget: never breathes a word, after, of how Aveline kissed her -- desperate, uncoordinated, sobbing _make me stop thinking_ against her mouth. Isabela has been everyone's lover and no one's beloved, and Aveline carries her dead templar like the memory of home in her breast, and they come together in tangled limbs, Isabela's weakness and Aveline's craving for human warmth to _forget_. Isabela keeps that secret with her in silence, down the years: _You don't need to be embarrassed, Big Girl. I won't kiss and tell._

The insults become a ritual, the edges worn off by time and something like _belonging._ Isabela says _Prude_ and Aveline says _Slattern_ , and neither of them can quite pinpoint the moment when the viciousness goes out of the needling, when _prude_ and _slattern, Lady Man-Hands_ and _bitch_ start meaning _my friend_.

 

* * *

 

 

> _Aveline: (Laughs)_
> 
> _Isabela: And then he says... he says, "I swear I had two when I came in here."_
> 
> _Isabela: You know, those stains never did come out._
> 
> _Aveline: You are horrible. Every inch._
> 
> _Isabela: You love it, big girl. And you owe me for the bottle._
> 
> _Isabela: Hawke._
> 
> _Aveline: She's not so bad. Except when she is._

 

* * *

 

They kiss again, more than once. Aveline misses her chance with the stammering guardsman she's been carrying a torch for, and Isabela is -- not safe, exactly. Never safe. Isabela is a cat, all secrets and claws, all independence and pride, who occasionally consents to come when you call. Aveline sometimes feels that sex with Isabela -- often angry, sometimes tender -- is something she should feel shame for. But she can't be ashamed.

She might have been, once: but in the burning dark after the qunari retreat, after Isabela has _come back_ and Hawke has defeated the Arishok in the bloody whirl of blades -- a duel the age will sing of -- in a darkness lit by the embers of fires still burning in the lower town, she rakes her fingernails down Isabela's flanks, tongues her nipples, swallows the other woman's moans in her mouth, and all she feels is heat and _relief._

* * *

 

 

Kirkwall burns a second time.

Aveline stays, because she has her duty and duty is what she _is._

Isabela goes, because she's a pirate with a shipload of wanted fugitives and the tide's calling her on.

They aren't friends. What's between them is more complicated than that, and less easy to name.

But Isabela keeps Aveline's secrets. And Aveline lets her go.

 

* * *

 

 

Isabela does favours for Aveline, in ports up and down the Waking Sea. And now and then a pirate brig makes port in Kirkwall's harbour. And Aveline looks the other way, again. Looks the other way, still.

And looks for Isabela coming from the docks at nightfall, to hear _prude_ and say _slattern,_ insults become endearments in the shadows of a changed world. They are what they are, do-gooder and whore: but still, for each other, each other's anchor.

The safe port, before the storm.


End file.
